Yesterday I did some nosing around on the internet regarding my Mum's cousin. He was a rear gunner in a Halifax that was shot down in May 1943 over Holland. When I was growing up my mother occasionally spoke of him as she remembered meeting him during the war (he grew up in west London & mother in south Wales) when he was in uniform she was eleven when he was killed aged twenty-two.
As I ferreted around I followed leads from the website of 51 Squadron that was based at Snaith near York. I found out the number of the aircraft he was in DT645 and searched for that and I came across this:
http://www.aircrewremembered.com/smith-watson-david.html
My mothers cousin is Sgt WJ Merrigan and from what I recall he was the tail-gunner on this Halifax. Bearing that in mind it dawned on me as I read that there was the very real possibility that as the plane was shot from the rear he was the first to die and was spared the horror of being in a plane out of control and heading for the ground at a rate of knots.
I then read about the pilot who shot his plane down - well he was certainly no amateur as this was his 25th kill and he had survived the Battle of Britain. Then I read on and found that he himself was dead the very next day! The next bit certainly surprised me - instead of thinking 'Serves him right the $#%£&*@ for killing a member of my family.' My thought was simply he was doing a job in the same way that my mothers cousin who was twenty-two was doing a job, he was thirty-three - no age really for either of them, I just felt sad that these people died as a result of one small group of lunatics who wanted to rule the world and they were nothing more than bystanders caught up in it.
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